


The Final Frontier

by hopeless_eccentric



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, Captain Buddy Aurinko, F/F, First Mate Jet Sikuliaq, Fluff and Humor, Getting Together, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Other, Peter Nureyev Can't Drive, Poisoning, Ship's Doctor Vespa Ilkay, and for non star trek fans you dont need to worry about anything, poison-induced love confessions, spaceships at least, they fight a giant lizard that's not NOT the gorn, this is for aesthetic and nostalgia only
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-17 12:42:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28725270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeless_eccentric/pseuds/hopeless_eccentric
Summary: Between her consistency as a leader and what Vespa had to admit was an admirable rebellious streak for a Captain, Vespa expected to have a fairly functional working relationship with Captain Aurinko. However, it seemed Buddy’s leadership was not the only thing she managed to do consistently.“What the hell do you mean the Captain’s injured again?” Vespa hissed into her communicator.Somewhere, on the other side of the metal device, her crewmate, constant patient, and perpetual nuisance swore.“I dunno!” Juno shot back. “That’s what happens when you get beat up by a giant lizard alien thing.”“By a what?”
Relationships: Buddy Aurinko/Vespa Ilkay, Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel, Vespa Ilkay & Jet Sikuliaq, Vespa Ilkay & Juno Steel
Comments: 18
Kudos: 58





	The Final Frontier

**Author's Note:**

> hey all!! heads up, i kept most of the heavy star trek referencing pretty minimal for non fans, but for anyone who's interested this is most heavily based on star trek: tos
> 
> Content warnings for mentions of gun ("phaser") violence, nausea mention, injury, influence from space lizard poison i have no clue how to put that

If Vespa “that’s Doctor to you, Steel” Ilkay valued anything in a commander, it was consistency. Any time she found herself staring down the barrel of a phaser set to kill, she wanted to know exactly what her Captain was going to do about the matter. She didn’t want to have to guess when the shields would go up or down or which signs of aggression a passing starship would have to show before the crew would start negotiations and she was told to prepare a few extra beds in the medbay.

Captain Buddy Aurinko proved to be exactly as consistent as Vespa had hoped. She was always the kind of leader who would see out an altercation by being on the ground of the planet side by side with her crew and always the type to negotiate before so much as considering the U.S.S. Enterprise’s shielding technology. She was always a cool-headed and calming presence, if not a little too focused on emphasizing the idea of a crew as a family for Vespa’s taste.

Between her consistency as a leader and what Vespa had to admit was an admirable rebellious streak for a Captain, Vespa expected to have a fairly functional working relationship with Captain Aurinko. However, it seemed Buddy’s leadership was not the only thing she managed to do consistently.

“What the hell do you mean the Captain’s injured again?” Vespa hissed into her communicator.

Somewhere, on the other side of the metal device, her crewmate, constant patient, and perpetual nuisance swore.

“I dunno!” Juno shot back. “That’s what happens when you get beat up by a giant lizard alien thing.”

“By a what?”

“Look, do I look like a goddamn entomologist to you?”

“Is it a bug?”

“No—” Juno broke off for a yelp as somewhere in the distance, something that was distinctly not an insect roared and the ground of the planet below audibly shook. “Yeah? Maybe.”

“Glad to see I have helpful crewmates,” Vespa huffed.

“Are you gonna prepare a goddamn cot for her or not?”

“You haven’t given me anything to work with, Steel,” she growled. “What’s the damage?”

“Buddy took a tail spine to the chest,” Juno sputtered out between bright, electric bursts from his phaser. “Goddamn thing isn’t even working.”

“Focus, dammit!”

“Right,” Juno breathed. “Thanks. She’s not out, but she’s kinda woozy. Jet got hit pretty bad, but he says it’ll just bruise.”

“Where’s the hacker?”

“Setting a pyrotechnic lizard trap,” Juno grimaced. “You think you can get Ransom to steer the ship a little closer so it can pick us all up? I can’t get through to the bridge. I think there’s some kind of communication blocker on this planet. Hell, it makes sense, what with the—”

Juno broke off to yelp and Vespa nearly dropped the scalpel she didn’t realize she’d been hanging onto for dear life onto her toe.

“Steel!”

“I’m fine,” he breathed. “Just get the word to Ransom to beam us up.”

“How hurt are you?”

“Broken rib, maybe a little internal bleeding, but what the hell? That’s where my blood’s supposed to be,” Juno returned flatly.

“Steel,” Vespa growled.

“I’m joking, Jesus Christ, can’t a guy make a joke or two while getting the shit kicked out of him by a lizard?” Juno wheezed. “Hey, big guy! Take a look over here. One ugly mug to another.”

Vespa held the communicator away from her ear as the lizard roared.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s what I think when I look in my mirror every morning,” Juno snorted, though his tone went drier as he turned back to the communicator. “I’m gonna need to go in a second. I need to keep this ugly dinosaur occupied while Rita sets the fuse. I need you to tell Ransom something for me, alright?”

“Yeah, yeah, beam you guys up, I’m calling up to the bridge now,” Vespa huffed as she began her jog over to the button in the wall.

“One other thing,” Juno breathed. “We’ve got a second while this big scaly moron decides whether he likes his ladies minced or smashed. Can you—If I don’t make it back, tell Ransom I love him, alright?”

“Steel,” Vespa sighed. “I need you to promise me something.”

“What?”

“You’re gonna be alive to say it yourself, because I’d rather cut my goddamn tongue out than tell Ransom that,” she grumbled, though she couldn’t help the twitch of the corner of her mouth when she slammed a button in the wall. “Hey Ransom, Steel says he’s gonna leave you for the lizard if you don’t beam him up.”

“What?” Ransom sputtered out over the intercoms.

“It was a joke, moron, steer a little closer and get an engineer on the transporters.”

“Is Juno still on the communicator?”

Vespa made a hacking noise she could almost hear coming through the intercoms on the bridge a few floors up.

“I’m not gonna enable you two saying gross shit to one another just because you’re—”

The floor of the vessel jostled before Vespa could even manage to finish her sentence, though from the sudden downwards tilt that jostled her off the intercoms button and sent her all but crashing into one of the nearby cots, she knew Ransom had received the message.

“Vespa, are you still there?” Juno called through her communicator. “Buddy’s asking for you, and—”

“Can it wait until after you blow up the goddamn lizard?” Vespa spat, voice rendered rough with the effort of clinging onto the wall.

“She keeps saying some really weird stuff, and I dunno—”

“Steel, next time you see him, forget about telling Ransom anything mushy or whatever. Tell him that if he’s gonna be the navigator he can’t steer the ship like a bicycle,” she grimaced. “God, I can’t puke, I just mopped the damn floor.”

“Ready in three, Mistah Steel!” Rita cried from somewhere nearby. “One!”

“Vespa, I’ve gotta go--”

“Two!”

“Stay in one piece,” she returned. “And don’t die, I don’t wanna waste the next three hours scrubbing your guts off the floor of the transporters.”

“Juno, get down—” Sikuliaq started.

“Three!”

Vespa couldn’t be sure if it was the transporters or the explosion or another rock thrown at Steel’s ugly mug, but something whooshed through the speaker of the device and the line went dead before Juno could so much as finish his sentence. If she had the time, she would have been worried. However, she knew well she would have at least one injured crewmate to drag back to the medbay and panic would do nothing to help her for the time being.

That didn’t mean something rough and clawing didn’t start to crawl up her throat anyway as her feet began their death march down the twisting hallways of the vessel. She wasn’t exactly sure how long it took her to get to the transporter room, where any second now, four of her crewmates would be materializing. Between the pounding of her heart and the squirming of worry just below her breastbone, she knew better than to even attempt keeping track.

For as much as Vespa took issue with the Captain’s insistence on joining her crew on their more perilous missions, citing that she should have no more right to safety than anyone else on the vessel, there was something else that made their working relationship more difficult than Vespa could say.

Vespa didn’t exactly have a name for the sensation, largely because she didn’t like thinking about it for longer than she had to. However, she couldn’t deny that in Buddy Aurinko’s presence, her eyes lingered too long and her hands fumbled too much and her tongue twisted itself in a knot when grasping for what to say at any given time. Thankfully, Buddy was well spoken enough for the both of them, but that didn’t make Vespa’s arteries do any less of a gymnastics routine every time a casual ‘darling’ slipped past her lovely, perfectly arced lips.

She didn’t have long to think about such things, thankfully. With a beam of blue light and an electronic buzz, the columns of gray and blue in the transporter room phased four familiar shapes into view, one of whom was using her lovely, now split lips to gasp out Vespa’s name.

“Shit,” Juno breathed as he stumbled off of his dais to clutch at the wall with one hand and cover his mouth with the other. “Ugh, I don’t think I’m ever gonna get used to that.”

“Can it, Steel,” Vespa hissed. “Sikuliaq, how’s the Captain?”

Jet, resourceful as ever, had already lifted Buddy into his arms and started making his way towards the door.

“She appears to be breathing and semi-conscious, though I don’t have enough medical experience to say anything more for certain,” Jet returned as Vespa jogged to keep up with him. 

From the looks of it, Rita was uninjured, and if Steel discovered any problem worse than his airsickness, he would certainly come to her later to bitch about it. Vespa’s only true worry was the Captain, limp and gray and muttering in her First Mate’s arms.

The doctor in her told her to set any idiotic personal feelings aside and focus on exactly what she had to do to help. However, the doctor in her seemed to be feeling just about as weak kneed as she was, and therefore, when she pressed Jet on Buddy’s condition, she couldn’t help but sputter.

“What’s—” Vespa broke off for a breath as she kept her jog up. “What’s the injury on the chest?”

“The unknown alien lifeform struck Captain Aurinko with a barbed tail resembling the tails of the small, poisonous lizards we came across when refueling on Rangia,” Jet returned. “Would you like me to slow down?”

“Shit,” Vespa breathed.

“That was not an answer.”

“I know it wasn’t a goddamned answer,” Vespa spat. “I think I might have an antidote that works for that, but I’m not sure. Just—when you get there, just drop her off in a bed and get back to the bridge.”

“I am the First Mate, Vespa,” Jet returned evenly. “I am aware that is my duty.”

“I—” Vespa broke off into a groan that strained into a high pitch with the effort of jogging down the stairs at Jet’s side.

“Is it helpful to give people orders when you are under great quantities of stress?”

“I don’t know,” Vespa grumbled.

“If you are to find that the answer is affirmative, I will happily receive your orders to return to the bridge. It is best for the entire crew that our doctor be calm while dealing with such important matters.”

“I know they’re important!” Vespa snapped, letting out a huff once Jet deposited Buddy atop the bed in the medbay. “Just—go do whatever the hell you have to do.”

Jet paused.

“Did that make you feel better?”

“Yeah, maybe it did,” she growled. “Now get the hell outta here if you still wanna be the First Mate by tomorrow.”

Vespa didn’t have time for pity, but if she did, she might have spent some on the way Jet’s eyes lingered on the Captain, limp and bleeding from the narrow slice tearing the chest of her standard issue Captain’s uniform like tissue paper. Vespa knew well the two had dragged each other kicking and screaming through the worst parts of their lives.

As much as the nerves making her hands twitch were selfish, they ached for her crewmate as well.

Jet didn’t linger long. Vespa missed his company the second it departed, for even with the steady, beeping breaths of the various machines in the medbay, the quiet became a paper thin ambiance sliced through with every grimace or hitched breath from the Captain’s pain-parted lips.

“Bud,” Vespa started gently, unsure where her usually rough and brusque bedside manner had run off to when she needed it most. “Are you doing okay?”

“Thoroughly poisoned, how about yourself?” Buddy chuckled, high and reedy enough to knock Vespa back to her senses as she began to rifle through one of the nearby cabinets for an antidote meant to work on lizards of a much smaller size.

“Could be better,” Vespa returned earnestly, though the words were trailing and distracted as her hands flew over the vials. “Is your brain doing anything weird yet?”

“Excuse me?”

“The poison, it—” Vespa broke off to make a victorious noise as the right bottle fell into her hand, getting steadier and steadier as the routine of an emergency treatment began to settle upon her mind. “It’s not great for inhibitions. A lot of people say a lot of stupid shit just from poking the wrong gecko.”

“That sounds like it should be a euphemism for something,” Buddy mused. “I assume, however, from the terrible peace negotiations I just had with a reptile taller than Jet, that you are being quite literal.”

“I’m just saying that if you start to feel like you should say something, don’t,” Vespa returned as she began to feed the antidote into an IV. “If you want the room to be a little less quiet, I’ll talk you through what I’m doing, but you don’t have to say anything until you feel a little better, got it?”

“Vespa, darling,” Buddy began. For once, Vespa was thankful for the chemical cocktail blurring her senses and attracting her gaze to a spot upon the ceiling. Otherwise, she might have caught the way Vespa tried and failed to hide a gentle smile at the sweet nothing she feared was truly nothing at all. “It’s as if you’ve hardly met me.”

“I told you we needed to go out to lunch sometime so I didn’t just talk to you while patching you up,” Vespa snorted, setting the bottle aside in favor of some bandaging and basic treatment for the injury.

“As wonderful as lunch sounds, especially with a lady such as yourself,” Buddy began, hardly raising an eyebrow when Vespa tripped over the IV pole. “I was referring to the fact that you seem to expect me to be quiet at any point.”

“Bud,” Vespa warned.

“I do love the sound of that one,” Buddy mused.

“What?”

“Bud,” she repeated. “Yes, it’s particularly nice from you, my darling.”

Vespa tried her best to swallow and apply the wrappings as well as she could.

“I don’t think you’ll need stitches for this, but make sure you don’t mess with the bandage,” she murmured, trying to bury the leaping thing in her chest with standard bedside procedure. “Is the antidote kicking in yet?”

Vespa’s attempt at steering the conversation seemed to have gone as smoothly as Ransom’s attempt at steering the ship.

“These standard issue shirts are terribly flimsy, aren’t they?” Buddy mused, as if Vespa needed any more reminders of just how hot her face was getting at the prospect of tearing open the shirt of not only her Captain, but Buddy Aurinko.

“Yeah, well, you always get yours torn,” Vespa retorted. “Maybe you wouldn’t need a new one every two weeks if you stopped getting hurt so often.”

“Then I suppose I’d need a better excuse to see my doctor,” Buddy smiled, her eyes dazed, though her million dollar grin still gave Vespa a jolt like a laser scalpel to the heart. “You’re not on the bridge hardly enough, darling. Your counsel is wonderful, of course, but I—”

“Bud,” Vespa warned.

“Your eyes, darling,” Buddy slurred. “They’re so very sharp. I don’t think there’s a better shade of gray in the galaxy, and I’ll have you know that I have seen my fair share of planets.”

Vespa wanted nothing more than to ground her thoughts in memories of the poison’s impacts on the mind and the fear that the antidote might not be working, even at an adjusted dosage. However, the sight of improving vitals upon the screen at Buddy’s bedside calmed Vespa’s nerves just enough that she wasn’t jumpy enough to kill her hope before it could bloom.

“Buddy,” Vespa began slowly. “I think you should get some rest. The antidote will kick in by the time you’re up again.”

“Might I spend some time with you then, my darling?” Buddy yawned, though her words continued to trail and drag as she fought tooth and nail against the gentle, chemical sleep provided by the antidote. “Will you be here when I wake up?”

“Yeah,” Vespa swallowed. “Yeah, I will.”

Vespa made sure Steel knew how disappointed she was that he hadn’t managed to get his tongue chopped off in the action, and he made sure she knew exactly where she could stick her medical degree. As much as somewhere, incredibly deep down, she liked having him around, she almost regretted how little work his quick bandaging job and physical exam had required. With hardly a scratch on Jet or Rita, that left her with too much time on her hands and far too many thoughts to occupy it.

It was just a matter of time until Buddy awoke, likely having forgotten their entire conversation, or worse, remembered it through a haze of embarrassment. Vespa tried to stomach thoughts of resignation or firing or even the ramifications of showing her face in front of her own commander after that, but no matter how many times she organized her cabinets, such thoughts refused to be suppressed.

She knew the whole ordeal would only crash into its fiery conclusion when Buddy awoke. Thankfully for her, she didn’t have to wait long.

“Vespa?” Buddy murmured a few hours later, the word slurred, but stronger than her speech before. “Darling, where are you?”

“I’m right here, Captain,” Vespa returned evenly, trying her best to cover just how quickly she had rushed over by checking Buddy’s vitals, as if she hadn’t been staring them down for the last several hours.

“Are the rest—”

“All fine,” Vespa assured her upon taking a seat at her bedside. “Steel’s been bitching and moaning, but it’s probably for the best. I’d be worried if he wasn’t.”

Buddy chuckled at that, and for just a moment, Vespa regretted making the joke at all, for the blazing light of Buddy’s laughter threatened to cleave her heart in two.

“I’ve said it once, and I am certain I’ll say it many times again,” Buddy returned. “I will always prefer having a family over having a crew, regardless of our squabbles or particular idiosyncrasies.”

“He drives me up the goddamn wall sometimes, but I’d say you’re probably right,” Vespa replied.

“Of course I am,” Buddy smiled. “Most of the time, at least. I suppose that’s why I have the position I do.”

“Speaking of which—” Vespa started, but her words trailed away when Buddy’s grin went softer, instead of hardening into stern discipline. 

“Yes?”

“If you want me to resign—”

“Vespa!” Buddy cut her off. “Why on earth would I want such a thing?”

Vespa swallowed.

“I mean—when you were under the influence of the poison, I could’ve been a lot more professional, and I think it screwed up my performance, and—”

“Bud,” Buddy broke her off, voice soft. “You called me Bud last time we spoke.”

“Captain, if you want—”

“No,” Buddy cut her off. “I liked it very much, in fact.”

“Buddy,” Vespa breathed.

“I think you were right,” Buddy continued on. “I think we ought to get to know one another a little better outside of such a setting. The ship is taking a short rest on Venus. I thought we all could use it after the debacle on Cestus III, and perhaps, I might take it as an occasion to take you out for dinner.”

“What?”

“I don’t believe I stuttered, Vespa,” Buddy returned evenly, a bright, almost mischievous look blooming in her eye. “As my doctor, I believe the two of us should get along. As someone I believe to have insights as to how I should best go about my duties, I believe we ought to know each other well.”

“Bud,” Vespa paused her before she could continue. “What about everything you said with the poison and all that?”

Buddy shrugged.

“I suppose my loosened tongue merely spoke what I have been trying to say for quite some time now. Perhaps I didn’t express myself the most eloquently then, so allow me to make amends now,” Buddy pressed on before Vespa could do anything more than sputter. “I had a third point to make after all, and I don’t see why I should stop running my mouth now. As someone who admires you a frankly embarrassing amount, I hope we might be able to get to know one another personally.”

“Buddy, I—”

“Will you join me for dinner once I tell Ransom where to direct the ship?” Buddy asked, her voice falling into a gentler tone.

“Yeah, but maybe tell him where to go early so I don’t lose my lunch first,” Vespa heard herself chuckle, and once again, with a sound as sweet as phaser fire hitting a bullseye, the Captain laughed.

**Author's Note:**

> HELL YEAH that was so fun and also so self indulgent thanks for stickin with it
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below or ill wear 60's retrofuturism clothing at you 
> 
> Check me out on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !!


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